


i’m yours (to keep) (to lose)

by knewwellenough



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (barely but it's there and it's canon in whatever i write), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), M/M, Near Death Experiences, rise of skywalker speculation based on a new tv spot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21590722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knewwellenough/pseuds/knewwellenough
Summary: inspired by a clip from one of the new tv spots; finn nearly loses poe, and that spurs some action in him
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 21
Kudos: 298





	i’m yours (to keep) (to lose)

**Author's Note:**

> smash cut to me, after like, two months of complete fixation on it chapter two, sprinting back to my star wars folder.
> 
> for emily, without whom this would not exist. thank you for letting me dump some "oh god poe might die in ros" nonsense in your dms. i usually take a very long time to write anything, but i wanted this out on a "before ros comes out" deadline so apologies for the steep decline in my usual already-bad quality.
> 
> title from "so it goes", t. swift

  
  


\--

  
  


It’s horrifying how fast it’s almost over.  
  


Things had already been going from bad to worse pretty quickly; alongside Poe and Rey, the three of them had been moving through the belly of the Star Destroyer, placing bomb upon bomb upon bomb in corners and crannies. All far enough apart, but enough of them to cripple the flagship irreparably. And it’s not long at all before they’re running into Stormtroopers on patrol.  
  


At first, it’s easy enough to get past this. Rey waves her hand, her shoulders straighten, and the troopers’ blasters go down without a fight. The second time she does it, Poe looks over at Finn and grins from ear to ear. Finn’s face goes warm while he smiles back, and Rey doesn’t seem to notice any of it when she whispers at them to keep moving.  
  


But all that is no longer a sustainable option within a matter of minutes. Rey does her best, but with too many Stormtroopers choking the hallways, the three of them quickly settle that, yes, running is also a good idea.   
  


Finn and Poe take the lead, blasters-first through every door. After several corridors, Rey breaks from them, up into the higher levels; Finn watches her go with nervous confidence. He already knows what she’s doing and why she’s doing it, he felt it in his mind the moment she did, and so he pushes onward with Poe.  
  


By the time they make it to what could be most considered the ground floor- the level of the ship with the hanger- several alarms have started up behind them. It keeps the adrenaline going through him at a constant, which is not something that Finn inherently _needed_. He already knows the longer they’re still inside the Destroyer, the more likely capture or injury or death is. And he remembers well enough what escaping from one of these feels like.  
  


The momentum comes to a brief pause when the two sprint through another pair of doors and there is no more hallway for them to continue down. Finn throws out his arm to stop Poe, even though they both catch themselves well before the walkway stops.  
  


He glances to his side, at Poe, and sees his hand fisted up on the shoulder of his vest too. It makes a fondness bloom under his skin.  
  


Stray blaster fire flies on either side of them and stops the moment before it can start. Finn, alongside Poe, still as perfectly synced as two people could be, quickly swivel back into focus. They both raise their blasters and shoot back, careful to only take the smallest of steps backwards to maintain a reasonable distance between themselves and the troopers.  
  


Bad to worse.  
  


Finn can only see what happens as he plays it back later in his mind’s eye: a lucky Stormtrooper, from somewhere above, somewhere where neither him nor Poe are actively looking, manages to land a shot on Poe and hits him in the arm. And in the time it takes for Poe to stumble back with it, another hits; higher, this time, almost on his shoulder. It’s enough to knock him off the edge of the walkway.  
  


In the moment, though, all Finn registers- all he really _needs_ to register- is that Poe flinches at his side- _jolts_ \- and then he’s going over.  
  


Finn can’t say for sure, but he thinks he screams for him. His throat is raw with it later.  
  


He responds fast, in part because any other speed just isn’t possible in his mind. His knees hit the ground hard, blaster sliding off to the side with disregard. One hand stops him from going over as well, while the other lunges forward, closes around Poe’s wrist. With the jolt of a sudden stop, it slips a little, until their hands lock together.  
  


And— it’s not the best grip. Pope’s hand is hot and sweating and so is Finn’s, if he’s honest, but the second he has him, Finn’s grip is as tight as he can make it. His arm trembles softly, both the one keeping him on the ledge and the one outstretched for Poe.  
  


For a moment, Finn looks past him, at the chasm below. He knows there is a bottom to it, but you would never know from this high up. All you can see is endless darkness. It makes Finn nauseous.  
  


He looks back at Poe. Poe also glances at the pit of nothing beneath him and then looks up at Finn. A smile breaks out onto his face. Finn can see where his shirt sleeve is burnt open, black edges of the blasts still sizzling.  
  


Poe is grinning up at him, almost laughing, and Finn can tell by the way he’s moving his injured arm that he’s trying to get enough force going to swing himself up and grab onto Finn more tightly.  
  


“Nice catch—”  
  


Finn feels it before he comprehends it, the slide of Poe’s hand through his own. Poe’s smile vanishes, a look of near not understanding behind his eyes. Panicking, Finn lets go of the ledge, pushing himself as far forward as he can without falling, and grabs for Poe again with his other hand. Their fingers _graze_. But they miss.  
  


Finn has contemplated the loss of his friends before. Sometimes, awake at night, floating aimlessly through space with knowledge of all they fight against, it’s all he _can_ think of.  
  


But it was always at its worst to think of losing Poe. In the fantasies, it’s a slow and terrible thing; there’s screaming, crying, every expression of anguish Finn has ever known.  
  


In reality— it’s so quiet. Poe is quiet, despite the ever-intensifying expression of horror on his face. And Finn, despite the feeling of a lump very suddenly forming in the base of his throat, doesn’t scream. The moment Poe slips from him, the air is gone from his chest. He can’t breathe, let alone scream.  
  


But Poe does not plummet as he should.  
  


It takes both of them much longer than it should to realize that Poe’s fall stagnates a mere few feet below Finn’s hand. A look of confusion now settles onto Poe’s face.  
  


Finn looks up and around until he finds Rey. And sure enough, he spots her on one of the ledges above them, one hand outstretched to block the Stormtroopers on the walkway with her, and one stretched out towards Poe and Finn. Too far to read her expression, but Finn can nonetheless feel a wave of relief come down on the back of his mind, an extension of her he’s felt before. Though it might just be him.   
  


After the initial confusion is gone, Finn moves back into gear; Rey gently lifts Poe back up, until he’s close enough that Finn can grab him. And _really_ grab him. Poe latches onto him as well, hand on his shoulder and visibly gritting his teeth while he uses his injured arm to brace himself on the ledge’s edge.  
  


Once Poe is back on solid ground, Rey drops her grip; Poe subsequently drops less than an inch, and he scrambles further back from the edge, breath coming in fast and heavy.  
  


Finn stares at the edge and then back to Poe. The sound of blaster fire from above them resumes. A moment passes, and Poe looks back to Finn. Finn can still see him falling, disappearing into that blackness, over and over again. He can still feel it on his hand where Poe’s had slipped. He needs to touch him again to know they’re not both falling.  
  


The moment is broken when blaster fire resumes behind them, as another bundle of troopers march over the bodies of the previous wave. Finn doesn’t move; it’s Poe who quickly goes for Finn’s blaster on the ground, who picks it up and takes them out effortlessly.  
  


“You okay?” Finn can move again when Poe speaks, blaster suddenly lowered. The Stormtroopers are all dead before the doorway. There’s the sound of more coming, of alarms, but they’re distant. Rey has found a way down onto their level and is running towards them from a ways away.  
  


He looks at Poe. There’s still a certain level of color that has yet to return to his cheeks, a shell-shocked sort of shakiness to him. But he’s moving, and both of their feet are on solid ground. Finn nods, and finally that grin comes back and brings life to Poe again.  
  


Poe extends a hand, and Finn takes it. His fingertips are still warm from where the blaster had been held for so long. It is a far-removed sense of urgency and preservation that gets him moving, keeps him up with Poe. Rey is on their heels in a matter of seconds.  
  


All at the same time, it is the longest and shortest run that Finn has ever been a part of. While Rey covers their back and Poe, with Finn’s blaster, clears them from the front, Finn is lost at sea.  
  


Slipping. Falling. Too breathless to scream. All over in less than a minute.  
  


Finn snaps back when his feet hit the boarding ramp. He slows to a stop inside, has just enough time to step to the side before Rey flies past him; she brushes a fleeting hand over his shoulder, her way of checking over him while there’s just no time to stop and do so slowly. Finn feels her, briefly, over him, before the feeling is just as quickly gone with her. He almost misses Poe, coming in with trooper fire still raining down behind him, until Finn is finally able to close the ramp.  
  


While Rey is starting up the ship, Finn is left with Poe in an almost-silence; the continued firing from outside the Falcon and even just the sound of ancient, rusted gears beginning to come to life inside the ship means there can be no true, ears-ringing silence.   
  


Silence. No screaming. Falling.  
  


Poe presses his back into the wall and takes a long, uneven breath. Finn crosses the room to him without a second thought, quickly taking Poe’s arm and looking him over. The shirt is no longer sizzling at the edge of the shots, but the skin underneath is significantly burned. There’s not a chance in the world of either wound being fatal, but it still makes Finn’s chest turn and tighten a click.   
  


Poe’s going to have to wait to get it dealt with properly— they both have to get to the guns once they’ve left the hanger. So Finn improvises, face set in concentration, and unwinds the scarf from around Poe’s neck. He wraps it tightly in his hands before tying it around the lower wound; he hopes it alleviates at least some of the pain, keeps him from bleeding, should the skin worsen or even start to bleed.  
  


“You okay?” He asks, briefly debating with himself if he should try and just cut the whole sleeve off.  
  


Poe takes another breath, but he’s smiling in a slow, calm way. He fumbles the detonator out of his chest pocket and presses it before he answers, a low rumble rocking the Destroyer beneath them. “Now I am.”  
  


He tucks the detonator away as the Falcon too begins to rumble, engines coming to life beneath them. He looks over his arm and flexes it experimentally, only indication of still hurting being a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Too bad. I was really digging the look I had going with that.”  
  


Finn had been digging it too. “That’s what you get for bringing an ascot on recon.”  
  


And Poe laughs at that, which gives Finn enough relief to smile a little too. But that easy shift from stress to comfort brings Finn back to _slipping, falling, silence_. It’s implausible that the Stormtroopers get to them within the Falcon, but knowing that makes nothing better.  
  


Poe’s smile fades into a look of worry. “ _You_ okay?”  
  


Finn nods immediately- impulsively- straightening himself and trying so, so hard not to psych himself out. He can’t spend the rest of this time off-base completely losing his shit over thinking about Poe and dying.  
  


Besides, he knows what Poe would say, should he bring it up: _If I die for this cause, then I die. I know nobody wants that- nobody_ wants _to die- but I signed up for this. We can’t get hung up on the what-ifs, buddy. I didn’t die, I’m going to eventually, that’s all just how it is.  
  
_

Finn nods again, slower. “Freaked out, but fine.” he admits.  
  


This time, Poe’s smile is considerably warmer, the smile that always melts him. Poe smiles at him like he holds the Resistance and all things good on his shoulders, like it’s not completely the other way around.  
  


Finn can feel his scream in his throat, still, all the raw panic and terror that had come out with it.  
  


“Me too,” Poe says, almost quiet, wetting his lips. “But we’re okay. And, besides, that’s why we don’t go anywhere without her.”  
  


His smile then is playful as he nods to the hallway leading to the cockpit, to Rey. The ship rumbles again beneath them, this time with takeoff. They do not have the luxury of time nor the ability to consider what-ifs, but a part of Finn still wishes he could just keep them here. Work over Poe, scrub the fall from his mind.  
  


Finn circumvents this by deciding not everything has to be a what-if. It’s a what-if on the fall; what if Rey hadn’t been there, what if neither she nor Finn had been able to catch him, what if Poe _had_ died there? All of that is a what-if. Not everything going forward is.  
  


And besides, when Poe takes his hand to grab it in a gesture of reassurance, and when he lets go again to get to the guns below, it feels too much like Letting Him Go Again. They’re falling. But Finn is faster this time.  
  


Poe takes a maximum of four steps before Finn moves to follow him. He says Poe’s name with more rawness that he was ready to present, his voice quiet but dire. Poe turns around immediately, same look of concern as before.  
  


It is not the kiss Finn had long imagined. On the nights where he wasn’t stricken with anxiety over the inevitability of loss, he would think about something like this. Somewhere after the war, everybody settled somewhere lush and warm and calm. Somewhere where Finn might finally get Poe to himself without a distant echo of guilt about it. He tended to imagine it with Poe kissing him, because it removed the fear of an unreciprocated fondness.  
  


That is not at all to say it’s bad when Finn takes Poe’s face in his hands and kisses him like a dying man.   
  


It’s the only time he’s ever really noticed the inch or two he has over him.   
  


And Poe is quick- perhaps intentionally so- to bring his good arm up and place his hand on the back of Finn’s neck. Not to pull him back, but to keep him exactly where he is. Close.  
  


Poe presses his forehead into Finn’s and Finn feels the rest of the world around them slip away, like receding waves.  
  


The Falcon shudders when it lifts off the ground of the hanger, and does so again when Rey guns it and they shoot out into space. Finn and Poe both pull back, both to brace themselves so they might stay standing, and to glance to the cockpit entryway; they’re so abrupt in stopping that it feels like if they _had_ fallen, and found that bottom hidden by darkness.  
  


When they turn back to each other, Finn can think of nothing he can say that would be suitable. A quip or reassurance is something much more a part of Poe’s skill set, but even he has gone uncharacteristically silent. If they’re going to ever say anything, they don’t have the time for it now.  
  


But they both seem to understand that.  
  


Poe’s head moves in what might be considered a nod, and Finn returns the gesture. Somehow, that makes it a little easier to watch Poe leave again. Once he’s out of sight, Finn can go too.  
  


Circumstances aside, it’s like putting on a glove the moment that Finn gets into the gunner’s chair. Instantly he’s grounded. He slips the headset on and Rey and Poe both are in his ear, all of them together a well-oiled machine. It makes Finn smile a little in spite of himself, in spite of simultaneously zeroing in on the TIEs tailing them.  
  


It does not take long to shoot down the Order TIES. Finn watches the Destroyer from ever-increasing distance as it begins to crumble, before Rey sends them to lightspeed and it’s all gone in a blur of blues and whites. Rey giggles a “good job” before the mic clicks off. Finn follows suit and removes his own headset, leaning back in the chair and relaxing at least partially, for what feels like the first time in days.  
  


Kissing Poe is the first thing that comes back to his mind. It’s easy to first feel embarrassed at his own impulsiveness, to berate himself for being so freaked out and anxious and jumping the gun on something he’d been moving towards at an otherwise glacial pace.  
  


But Poe hadn’t freaked out. He hadn’t even just stood there, reactionless. He’d kissed back, he’d wanted Finn closer.  
  


Finn stares at the ceiling for a moment longer, nerves and optimism on each shoulder, before he can work up the nerve to stand and climb back up the ladder.  
  


Poe is already waiting for him by the time Finn’s feet hit the ground of the hallway. The immediacy of the confrontation makes the nerves come back with a little more bite to them, but Finn isn’t about to climb back up and hide. He hasn’t run from much in the last few years.  
  


There’s a few moments of a strange silence (tense is the wrong word for it, and yet Finn can think of nothing else to describe the initial inability to move or speak), and then they both start to speak at once. Poe laughs, and it's the first time that Finn notices the color had fully returned to his face; Poe nods for him to go first.  
  


“Sorry for that being— abrupt. That wasn’t how I wanted to do that.” Finn stares at the floor until he stops talking, building up to look up at him.  
  


An eyebrow ticks up. “You were thinking-?”  
  


Finn checks Poe’s face for teasing. There’s some there, undeniably, but it’s not the driving force behind the question. He’s asking as awfully genuine as he always simply is.  
  


“After the fighting, when everything settled. No risk of-” he gestures vaguely back in the direction of the Destroyer. “-close calls like that.”  
  


“Oh, you were really in it for the long haul,” Poe comments, gaze flickering down with thought. It’s a little hard to read him now, but while they stand there, Finn can feel his nerves dying with every inhale, exhale. And then all at once he is calm again.  
  


“What about you?”  
  


It feels like a bold thing to ask, but— well, it’s been a bold day. Finn isn’t about to kill his own momentum. Poe had kept him close and kissed him back.  
  


Poe laughs a little, looking up at Finn with the _all things good in the world_ look, and shrugs with his good shoulder. “Whenever. Whenever I could. And there’s just been this neverending list of reasons why I didn’t think I could or why it wasn’t the right time or— just being a coward. I am a giant, horrible coward.”  
  


Another laugh comes out in a huff; Finn smiles less at the self-deprecation, more at the vague sense of validation and at the feeling of _knowing_. He didn’t lose Poe; and in turn, Poe didn’t lose him.  
  


This time, Poe closes the distance between them, and Finn is ready for it, hands again coming to rest on Poe’s cheeks once he’s close enough, once they’re kissing again. Poe’s injured arm can still move just enough to grip onto Finn’s vest; his good hand brushes over the side of Finn’s face, with a level of tenderness and intimacy that makes his head spin.  
  


Bad to worse. Worse to good.

**Author's Note:**

> always live on twitter @riseofinnpoe
> 
> leave kudos to charge a "poe lives" spell, leave a comment to cast.


End file.
